


La Loterie de Saint-Valentin

by iberiandoctor (jehane)



Series: Les Punitions de Toulon [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Alternate Universe - Sexy Toulon, Alternate Universe - Slavery, BDSM, Blow Jobs, Blowjobs for Justice, Canon-Era, Cock Cages, Dubious Consent, Identity Issues, Identity Porn, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Madeleine Era, Montreuil-sur-Mer, Multi, Power Imbalance, Power Play, Sexual Slavery, Sexual Violence, Sexy Toulon, Toulon-era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-22 10:26:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,311
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9603956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor
Summary: Javert withheld himself from Toulon’s Saint-Valentin lottery, but will he participate in Madeleine's proceedings in Montreuil-sur-mer?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Esteliel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/gifts).



> Happy Sexy Toulon Valentine's!
> 
> Thanks to beanie and ale for the beta ♥

The February afternoon is cold and overcast. Inspector Javert's boot-heels ring over old-fashioned cobblestones as he strides down the Rue du Change at his customary pace. 

He has been stationed in Montreuil for many weeks, enough time to become accustomed to its winding pathways and its rhythms. After almost two months of patrols, he can walk blindfolded through the upper and lower parts of the town and — from the feel of road surfaces under his boot soles, the noises of traffic and citizenry, and the smells of the unadulterated air — determine exactly where he is. 

In his peripheral vision, he can see the deputy accompanying him struggling to keep pace. Duchamp was born and raised in Montreuil, and is unknowing of larger towns and their more complicated populace and even more complex crimes. 

That is, of course, not to say that Montreuil has been free of crime.

Javert rounds the municipal building on the corner. Unexpectedly, there is a crowd gathering in the town square at Place Saint-Saulve. He pauses, taking in the men in their Sunday best, women in evening dresses that coats and wraps do not entirely conceal; many of them young, though no children are in attendance. Most of them are hurrying, as if not to miss a long-anticipated event. 

"What is happening there?" he asks Duchamp.

The young deputy falls into step beside him as they approach the square. "Ah yes, I'd forgotten what day it is."

Javert raises his eyebrows, and Duchamp tries a nervous smile. "It's the fourteenth of February, Inspector. La Saint-Valentin?"

"And it is for this reason nearly one quarter of the town's populace has gathered in the square?"

"Not exactly. We have a tradition on La Saint-Valentin that encourages the exchange of compliments between unmarried persons? It has become popular amongst the singles and widowed, and even the married folk come out to watch."

Javert cannot remember if Duchamp himself is married. "You are not participating?" he enquires. 

"I felt it was not seemly for a policeman. The tradition used to be less orderly than it is now in 1821; there were some breaches of public order." Duchamp blushes under his hat. "And in any case, I am now pledged to Angelique, and she would not stand for it, obviously."

Javert stops himself from rolling his eyes: Duchamp is after all still a young man and cannot help his preoccupation with matters of the heart. "How disorderly was it?" he asks; he wonders if he ought to call for reinforcements from the station-house nearby.

The young officer shrugs. "The unmarried men of the town gathered on one side of the square, and called out the names of the single women. As you can imagine, it would get rowdy when two men picked the same lady, or whenever a lady did not appreciate the attentions of a particular man… When the mayor came, he changed things. At any rate, it's called the loterie d’amour." 

Duchamp pauses when he realises that Javert has come to a halt in the middle of the street. Timidly, he says, "I know it sounds frivolous, Inspector. Did you not celebrate such a thing in the Midi, or your post after that?"

Javert cannot answer for a moment. Memories of other Saint-Valentin celebrations, other lotteries, are buried far underneath the cobblestones of his inner pathways, as insidious as the sewers that lurk beyond the streets of the city. Still, he can feel them beneath the surfaces of his conscious mind, knows exactly where he was when he experienced his first lottery. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


The February skies over Toulon were always overcast. Its salt air simmered sullenly in the town and in the bowels of the bagne, its unrelenting dampness like a chokehold on guards and prisoners alike.

Certainly Toulon had been infamous for all manner of chokeholds: those written in l'Ancien Droit and the peine infamante, and those that were not found in any statute book. 

The law before the 1810 Napoleonic code sanctioned iron collars which circled the prisoners' necks, to facilitate transport to and from the worksites. And the unwritten rules of the bagne mandated stiffened collars worn as a sign of ownership by the few who belonged to Toulon’s senior adjutant-guards. 

After all, violent criminals were less than men and could not be trusted with their own morality. In Toulon, they were taught to submit their viler passions to the mastery of the guards — this was good for society, and also for the prisoners themselves. A prisoner fortunate enough to be selected by a guard of sufficient seniority could hope to regain some of his rights in submitting to his master’s exclusive possession for the duration of his punishment. 

The younger adjutant-guards and sub-adjutants, those who had not risen to sufficient standing to collar, contented themselves by meting out permitted punishment. Insubordination, unsanctioned self-pleasure, or worse, physical contact between prisoners both solicited or unsolicited — any sign that a convict's body belonged to anyone other than the sovereign authority of Toulon — were all offences to be dealt with by the unique system of discipline that was written into every stone and brick of the bagne. 

And then there were the privileges that were afforded to each guard, no matter how junior, every year in February, in the lottery of Saint-Valentin. 

Entering Toulon, Javert was familiar with its prison discipline. This had also been practised in the small prison in Hyères, the place of his birth. He had been raised in the shadow of creaking restraints and the thudding of rope on flesh, with the small, relentless noises of sex, the stifled screams and then helpless groans of release. He had grown to adulthood determined to align himself with those who protected society from criminals who needed to have the brute instinct fucked out of them as well as beaten.

Yet when a prisoner was slow to obey his orders, or rolled an eye in his presence, Javert would reach for his standard-issue truncheon rather than for the clamps and the rack. When he felt the heat rise in his blood, he did not seek out the salles like so many of his colleagues, instead quelling his hunger with his own inadequate hand — even though criminals had lost the rights to their bodies by breaking the law, Javert could not force himself on them in such circumstances. 

He knew his colleagues commented on his continued rectitude behind his back: did this youngster think so much of himself that he would not stoop to indulge with sinners and thieves? Did he see himself above the privileges afforded to their position, or was he so reticent as to withhold the punishment of the flesh that the prisoners themselves had come to expect?

With his first February in Toulon, Javert experienced his first Saint-Valentin lottery. 

He had just come off-shift and was momentarily taken aback by the eager stream of uniform-clad bodies hurrying down the corridor of the main building. 

M. Maugin, the tall Adjudant-Chef of their section, was amongst the press of guards; he happened to look across the corridor and spotted Javert, who stood a head above most of the younger officers. 

"Come along, lad," he called to him, and Javert fell into step beside him. 

"What's the emergency, sir?"

Maugin chuckled. "You'll see soon enough. It's an emergency of _l’amour_ , at any rate."

Indeed, Javert had seen, when they entered the courtyard and joined the forty or so of their younger colleagues already present. The prisoners were lined up in their customary work-chains. What was not customary was that they had been stripped of their rags, exposing bare skin and muscles and bony ribs. Most of them were shivering in the February chill, but they did not dare risk pressing against each other for warmth.

"Welcome to this year's lottery," M. le Commissaire announced. His collared submissive, the prisoner known as Gueux, stood fully-clothed at his side, holding onto his master's coat. 

Javert heard the cheer go up. It rang in his ears like nothing human.

"Let the drawing commence! In order of seniority," the Commissioner said, and Anton, a twenty-year veteran of the adjutant-guards, stepped forward. Javert had heard that the man's incompetence meant he had not yet earned his senior adjutant's status and the right to collar.

Anton licked his lips in anticipation. "Last year I had Brevet, did I not?" he said in an aside that was meant to carry. A dark-haired prisoner near the end of the line, who had been allowed to retain his knitted suspender but nothing else, snorted audibly. "This year I find myself desiring something different. Hey, Albin! It's your lucky day."

Another guard helped Anton unchain the young prisoner from the others in the line. "I'll be gentle," Anton said, winking. The other guards roared as he took hold of one skinny arm and led the boy in the direction of the underground cells. 

As Albin's screams mingled with the shouts of approval, another senior guard stepped forward. "Don't grieve, Brevet! I'll keep you company this year. We can do it out here so everyone can enjoy the view!"

"You're a better catch than Anton, sir, that's for sure," Brevet said, enticingly; other guards began stepping forward, calling out the names of the prisoners they had selected. 

Maugin was surveying the activities intently, one casual hand on the neck of his own submissive. Now he glanced at Javert, still rooted to the spot at his side. "What about you, lad? This only happens once a year, and you won't be senior enough to collar for a while yet. You should go claim the man you want."

Javert found the need to swallow before he could answer. His flesh was unaccountably roused; he did not know if Maugin could see the shameful press of his erection against the seams of his uniform trousers. 

"I believe I'll sit this year out," he said. With effort, he kept his face calm and his hands steady. He could see, on the edges of his vision, Brevet bent over in his chains, and the other convicts falling one by one on their knees for other guards. 

Maugin looked sharply at him, and then nodded. "Plenty of time for you to get used to our ways. If you don't want to choose for yourself today, go assist the others. It looks like Robert could do with some help."

Javert made his way amongst the press of coupling bodies to Robert's side. The portly guard had selected a convict of medium height and brawny mass; it was taking two guards to drag him forward, still manacled to the primary chain. 

Javert took hold of an arm that was solid, massive muscle, and looked down into a blank, vaguely hostile face. The big convict was not weeping and struggling like Albin, nor was he coyly agreeable as Brevet had been. Though he held himself proudly, he seemed resigned to Robert's attentions, and the thick, ruddy member between his powerful thighs was at half-mast. 

At the time, Javert had not known who he was. 

The man's curious regard held his, eyes bright in his broad, dirty face. Javert felt a spark of connection flare through the man's bare skin into his own body. 

The other guards had not managed to wrestle the convict into position against the wall, but the man moved for Javert. Javert used his truncheon to spread the convict's legs, not ungently; again, the man yielded, still staring at Javert. 

Javert could see the exact moment Robert managed to seat himself between the man's thighs, and he turned away to hasten from the yard.

The blood loud in his veins, trembling in each limb, he sought out the privacy of his deserted dormitory. As he leaned against the door and stroked himself, he could still see the men tangled together in the throes of the lottery, could still hear their moans of pleasure and cries of pain. Could see, behind his eyelids, the image of the big convict surrendering to his touch and then to Robert's mastery; this time, it wasn’t Robert for whom the convict spread his legs.

Groaning, Javert spilled over his hand. When he was done, he fell to his knees and threw up for the first and last time in his life.

  
  


* * *

  
  


"I hope you are not unwell, Inspector," a familiar voice says. Javert feels the long-buried surge of nausea, which he fights down through sheer force of will.

It would be him: the convict whose name Javert discovered after that first Toulon lottery and never forgot. Jean Valjean, Jean-le-Cric, currently masquerading as Madeleine, mayor of the God-fearing town of Montreuil-sur-Mer. The man has never been far from Javert's thoughts, even after Javert left Toulon behind, and it seems as if he has never been physically far from Javert as well. 

Of course Javert recognised him the moment they met again, in the mairie in Montreuil’s main square. It has been ten years since Toulon, but Jean Valjean's is not a face he would forget. 

Now as then, Javert schools his face to calmness, as if the notion of a fugitive disposing of his yellow ticket, of assuming the identity of a respectable gentleman and businessman, does not shake the foundations of his very self. A convict from Toulon, daring to reclaim mastery of himself, let alone to assume the mastery of a respectable town — it was not to be countenanced.

Have patience, Javert has been telling himself, over the days and weeks that he has been compelled to submit to the false mayor's authority. He has requested the necessary case-files from Paris, which should arrive any day now. And in any case, doubtless the man will soon stumble and his mask of righteousness will slip, and the beast hiding beneath will be revealed.

Only thus is Javert able to endure showing deference to Madeleine, whom he has to call M. le Maire and to whom he is duty-bound to render daily reports on the state of public order and petty crime within the town. Thus does he manage to withhold from seizing and devouring and arresting the man who he knows to be a criminal incapable of self-mastery. He must have patience. The prisoner Le Cric cannot run forever; soon enough, he will fall.

If Javert has enough fortitude, it may even be today. 

"I am perfectly well, M. le Maire." On the pretext of escorting the mayor through the crowd, Javert takes a tight hold of Madeleine’s arm. It is as strong and solid through the wool sleeve as Le Cric's had been in Toulon's rags. Javert smiles to himself when the muscles twitch uncontrollably at his touch.

The mayor is silent, and Javert presses on, "You will preside over today's proceedings?"

"None other," Madeleine says. His voice is even and gentle, but Javert fancies he can hear the tremor underneath its false steadiness.

Between his teeth, Javert says, casually, "I would not have thought you would put yourself forward in this way."

Madeleine ignores Javert's implied meaning, as he has continued to ignore all of Javert's increasingly pointed remarks over these last weeks. As if his conscience is truly clear, he raises his free hand to acknowledge the greetings of the people as they pass by. 

Madeleine pauses in the centre of the square to address Javert. "Inspector, I do as needs must. The old way of performing the lottery was unruly, I feared the people might come to blows or hurt themselves. This new practice was my own idea, and it is my duty to see it through."

Javert can say nothing to this. Such is the audacity of the imposter that he can counterfeit humility, and feign an understanding of duty! Perhaps today Javert will have the opening to take the action this false mayor deserves.

Madeleine holds his gaze for a moment, and then turns away to mount the steps. His elegant coat stretches across those familiar shoulders, hiding the unmistakable scars from the bagne's lash that Javert knows lie underneath.

Javert does not doubt for an instant that the impostor knows him too. From the instant their eyes met at that first lottery, Jean-le-Cric seemed to see through Javert — as if he could see beyond the mask of self-discipline to the weaknesses and temptations that Javert had wrestled with all his life.

  
  
  


After the lottery, Jean-le-Cric made the first of many attempts to escape. He was found and recaptured, and his back had been laid open to the scars he no doubt still wears today. 

The guards, masters and sub-adjutants alike, punished him in other ways as well for daring to flee from the bagne's rightful ownership. They stripped him, placed him in the public stocks in the yard, took their turns fucking his mouth and his hole and left him in manacles until the maximum period of sexual discipline had expired. 

Javert did not participate in either punishment, but he could not fail to notice it as he crossed the yard in pursuit of his duties. He took note, and watched, even, as Le Cric was subjected to the strictest of use, wearing manacles that did not allow him to touch himself; watched, as release was wrung from him anyway, time and again, over the hours and days that followed.

Toward the end of the period of discipline, Javert stopped to bring the convict a cup of water. The man hung in the stocks, the large, glistening muscles limp with weariness and pain and completion; he could barely lift his head. 

They eyed each other as Javert helped him drink. In Le Cric's eyes was exhaustion, resentment, and something more complex. Heaven knew what the convict saw in Javert's own eyes — hopefully not the stealthily mounting desire, which Javert had been telling himself would pass. 

"Thank you," Le Cric said. By Toulon's rules, he ought to have added an honorific, should have called Javert "sir". 

Javert knew he could have chosen to discipline the convict over the failure; his arousal ached with it. 

He chose to walk away, instead.

He could not explain his choice not to engage in the bagne's sexual discipline or in the lottery. It was not as if his body was not restless: indeed, he touched himself in every solitary moment he had, and it wasn't nearly enough. He told himself it was because he would not impose himself on prisoners who were unwilling, even though it was for their benefit, but he was afraid it was in truth because he feared enjoying it too much — that once he started, he would not be able to stop.

Perhaps when he had earned sufficient seniority to collar a convict, he would feel able to finally indulge his unquiet flesh as others did, and engage a prisoner justly, with self-discipline as well as discipline.

In the meantime, he endured his colleagues' teasing and ignored the speculation of the prisoners on the workyards and the lottery floor. What he could not ignore were the peculiar, penetrating eyes of Jean Valjean, even as he watched another guard claim that man in the next lottery, and the one after that.

  
  
  


Valjean tried to escape yet again, and this time Javert was amongst the soldiers that found him.

Le Cric was a wild beast, resisting capture so violently he managed to put two men in the infirmary, but when Javert took hold of him, all the fight sagged out of those big muscles and he surrendered himself to Javert's custody. The sensation of temporarily taming the beast was indescribable— it was as if justice itself had turned upside down, and nothing mattered except the convict’s submission.

This time the guards locked Valjean in the cachots used for solitary confinement, and clasped a device of iron between his thighs so he could not relieve himself as they disciplined him. 

Javert usually kept away from the disease-ridden cachots, but the next day M. Maugin asked him to summon Anton urgently, and that was where the senior guard was to be found. 

Anton had been with their prisoner for some time — his uniform trousers hanging around his ankles, one hand fisted in Le Cric's hair as he used the man's mouth — but he was not yet done when Javert discovered him, and did not appreciate being interrupted. Forgetting himself, he spat at Javert, and reached for his crop to lay it across Le Cric's face.

Javert watched himself wrest Anton's weapon away and slam the man into the nearest wall. His vision was furiously red-tinged, but his hands were rock steady. 

"Bastard, you fucking crazy? Get off me!"

"It's forbidden to strike a prisoner in the face with a weapon," Javert informed him. "Also, impeding a guard in his duties is a breach of bagne regulations. M. le Commissaire will hear of this in my report."

Anton swore again, but raised his hands in surrender, and Javert let him go. 

After Anton had dressed himself and staggered out of the cachot, Javert turned to Le Cric. The convict was slumped against the wall, wrists secured in front of him, cheekbone bruised and bleeding. Between his thighs, his cock and heavy balls were imprisoned within the iron cage.

Javert took hold of the prisoner awkwardly. The convict's bare skin felt feverish to the touch, more a beast's than any man's. 

"Are you all right? I will summon the physician."

Le Cric's half-open eyes glittered in the darkness. "I'll live," he said, the abused mouth making his speech thick. "It'll take more than this to harm me."

Javert did not doubt it. The massive, hairy chest and muscled limbs, the powerful body so resilient to hard use, seemed to defy all manner of damage or discipline or ownership. Broad and brutal, as untameable as a wild bull, Jean-le-Cric belonged solely to himself.

Perhaps this was why no one had yet claimed him. For what master would dare collar this beast for their own?

Valjean shifted restlessly in Javert's arms, and Javert could not help noticing that the man was aroused despite the cage that imprisoned him, his swollen member straining redly within its confines.

"Are you... do you need assistance? There should be a key..." 

Javert realised what he was saying, and fell silent. Was he just offering to free the man, or in truth offering to bring him to sexual release?

Le Cric shook his head. "Used to it," he muttered. Javert did not know if he was speaking of the cage, or the manacles, or the rules that kept him as much a prisoner as the iron on his body.

When Valjean recovered, he participated in the next lottery, and the next, and again Javert did not.


	2. Chapter 2

In Montreuil-sur-Mer, a very different lottery is occurring: a kinder, gentler lottery, in which its unmarried townsfolk are asked for their consent to participate.

"Welcome, my friends, to this year's celebration of La Saint-Valentin. It is good to see so many of you here on this February afternoon."

Madeleine addresses the crowd from his elevated step above the town square. At his side, the mayor's assistant fusses over a large wooden box, into which the populace desiring an evening of romance have apparently deposited letters of polite request.

Standing in the last of the afternoon light, Madeleine is smiling a faint, wry smile, one that Le Cric has never worn. His thick hair is shot through with silver that has not been there ten years ago. He cuts a handsome figure, this convict masquerading as a free man, his respectable clothes disguising brands and scars and a bestial body that cries out for discipline.

Beside Javert is the slender form of the Widow Aurélie, who runs the nearby Hôtel de France. She raises a languid white hand in order to catch the mayor's attention.

"Excuse me, M. le Maire. I wonder if this is the year you will accept my offer? I have been corresponding with you for some time, as has Mme. Fontaine, and you have always turned us down."

There is knowing laughter in the crowd, including a raucous bellow from the voluptuous, red-haired Widow Fontaine standing nearby. Javert feels an unaccountable stab of outrage.

Madeleine turns his mild smile to Aurélie and says, "Madame, as I have said before, as your mayor I must be seen to hold each of you in the same esteem and love. Certainly I cannot prefer one offer from a lady over another."

The Widow Aurélie puts her pretty head on one side and makes a moue of disappointment. Javert can hardly countenance this overt announcement of romantic intent, which Madeleine is shamelessly encouraging. How dare this man continue to flaunt himself before the good people of this town, pretending to be a fit prospect for any widow's attentions, when in years past he knew to bend his knee and submit his body to a man's proper discipline? 

His hands have curled into fists. He can barely stop himself from shaking with fury. He has never made Valjean his, and clearly such restraint has not found him any favour with that man, who clearly only ever respected one thing.

Madeleine has turned to the box and extracts the first note, a folded sheet of yellow paper. 

"This is from M. Nicolas," he says, and a youth in his twenties steps forward, grinning shyly. "M. Nicolas addresses Mlle. Jacqueline of the Boulangerie Broussard. _'Dear Mademoiselle, your eyes are like the night sky, and your voice is as gentle as a dove's. Please do me the honour of joining me for dinner at the Hôtel de France tonight'_."

Madeleine peers over the paper at the young woman, standing in a circle of her excited friends. "I have to say, Mademoiselle, the young man writes rather nicely. But of course, the decision is entirely yours. What do you say?"

"I'll consider it," the girl retorts, but she is smiling, and she blushes when young Nicolas approaches her and diffidently offers her his arm.

Matters proceed in much the same fashion. Madeleine reads a note from some hapless swain that proclaims his fondness for one of the local maidens, who is predisposed by the circumstances to accept his offer; in instances where there is a competing offer, one suitor is persuaded to stand down or is more or less gently rejected. 

Then Madeleine unfolds another note, and makes eye contact with Javert. The faint smile is edged with something more as he says, "This note is addressed to our Inspector Javert."

Javert feels his eyebrows climb all the way to his hat-line. "How unexpected," he says neutrally. 

Madeleine continues, mildly, "Inspector, in the short months you have been here it seems you have called attention to yourself. There is a note, no, two notes, addressed to you: one from Mademoiselle Moreau from the post office, and here is another from the Widow Fontaine."

Javert glances across at the red-haired woman, who has the audacity to wink at him. He cannot help the hot embarrassment that fills him, but he refuses to let himself colour like a schoolboy. 

Instead, he squares his shoulders and pulls himself up to his full height. He cannot continue to look at the beautiful widow or their serious assistant postmistress; he makes himself address the mayor instead. 

"I thank the ladies for their consideration," he says, aware that he does not sound thankful at all. "But Monsieur knows how pressing my duties are, and that I have no time to spare this evening for pleasantries."

"I do know that," Madeleine says slowly, as the crowd murmurs in disappointment. His eyes hold Javert's for once, unusually thoughtful. In another man, Javert would say that his gaze lingered meaningfully, even temptingly, but those are not adjectives that would ordinarily apply to this modest public servant who is so scrupulously eschewing all female attentions.

  
  
  


The convict had not been so scrupulous, nor could he be under Toulon's rules, which left no room for discretion or modesty.

Javert could not help speculating as to whether Valjean relieved himself in secret, or worse, if he engaged in clandestine relations with another prisoner. The convict obviously possessed ordinary sexual urges; although Valjean remained stoic throughout, he could not hide how responsive his body had been when disciplined or required to serve in the lottery. But since Valjean's last escape attempt, he had been the model of self-denying submission. He had obeyed instructions with alacrity, he made himself available to the guards on request, and he appeared otherwise to keep himself chaste as if he truly had no desires of his own. 

Perhaps he was hoping to gain something by his good behaviour. Or he was trying convince the authorities that he was capable of change. If he was trying to convince Javert, though, the convict would not find him so easily misled.

Javert did not expect Valjean to keep up the pretence for long, but the months lengthened to years without serious infraction, save for those occasions when Javert noticed the man staring at him, holding the eye contact until one of them had to look away. 

Then the day came when Javert happened upon the man in an act of infringement.

It was the wane of summer, the heat turning Toulon's grounds oppressive. The salles stank with the smell of unwashed men, and the dingy cachots were filled with wasting disease that had already claimed five of the convicts who had been sequestered there. Javert took to walking along the sea-wall along the perimeter of the bagne after his shift to clear his head of the stench. The stinging salt breeze and the open air brought temporary relief before he was compelled to return once again to the dormitory and fitful sleep.

One afternoon, he was about to mount the stairs that led up the wall when he realised that he was being observed.

Jean-le-Cric was standing in the lee of the wall, the demi-chain around his ankle. Unguarded, he was in a place he strictly ought not be, lest he manage to avoid the sentry, clamber up the parapet, and from there fling himself into the sea.

When Le Cric saw he had been noticed, he stepped from the shadows. The last of the sunlight lit his beard and the tangle of his hair. The years of service in the bagne seemed only to have made him even stronger. He had left off his smock in the summer heat, and his massive chest was covered with a sheen of sweat. The front of his trousers was damp with sweat, as well, and against the thin, wet fabric jutted the unmistakable outline of the man's erection.

Valjean saw Javert staring; he looked down, too, and the flush stained his chest as well as his cheeks. 

"I haven't been ... it isn't like that," he muttered. "It's just the heat."

"How can I be sure?" Javert asked. He stepped near the man, close enough to smell the perspiration and fear that curled off his skin, and something else.

"I swear it, Monsieur." The man swallowed and kept his eyes trained to the ground as he had been taught. "I have not laid hands on myself, nor done anything I shouldn't." 

"That isn't true. You should not be here; the sea-wall and its surroundings are out of bounds to you." Javert paused, and then added, "And you have been watching me, as you should not."

Valjean protested, "I just wish a breath of air in the heat, the same as you. Although... I do watch you, I confess it." He looked up and held Javert's gaze. With visible effort, he added, "You would be within your rights to chastise me."

Javert found he could not respond for an instant. The eagerness to lay hands on the prisoner unfurled in him like a flag in a high wind: an urge to take possession of that sweating, powerful body and grasp hold of the arousal that Valjean was not himself allowed to touch. 

It took long moments to recover his self-possession. He would not abuse the authority he had been entrusted with, and knew that enforcing that power over this man would be such an abuse, even if it was for Valjean's own good.

"I will overlook it on this occasion," he told the convict, once he was sure of his voice. "Do not do it again."

Valjean let out a gust of breath. Relief made his voice tremble, a strange thing in such a brutish man. "I will not. Not unless you ask me to." 

Javert asked, curiously, "Does that mean you would willingly do as I asked?" 

Le Cric did not answer immediately. When he next spoke his regard had become thoughtful. "You have been here for some years now, Monsieur. The others, they say you are well regarded."

Javert shrugged. He knew Maugin valued him and his men showed him reluctant respect; even the Commissioner had once commended his suggestions for the improvements in the shift system of the bagne. "I hope that is true. I was promoted early to adjutant-guard, at any rate."

Le Cric nodded as if the additional bars on Javert's uniform had indeed escaped his notice. He asked, neutrally, "Will you receive another promotion soon, do you think?"

Realisation broke him open like the crack of a dominant's whip, like a flash of lightning in a darkened sky. Javert had to pause for another long moment to catch his breath.

"Perhaps I will soon enough." His voice shook: a shameful thing in a man who aspired one day to bend a prisoner to his authority. "Would you do what I asked when that day comes?"

"Ask me then, and you'll see," Valjean said. His eyes shone. He bent his head very slightly to Javert, and stepped back into the shadows. 

For the next days and weeks and months, Javert could think of nothing else save gaining status through diligence and irreproachable conduct, and finally becoming worthy of the responsibility for another. To have that other be Jean-le-Cric, the beast of the bagne at Toulon, whom no other hand had managed to tame — that thought filled him with a heat he could not resist from slaking in stolen moments of privacy. When he reached his completion, panting and trembling in every limb, it was with the prisoner's visage before his eyes and Valjean's name on his lips.

And then autumn turned to winter, and envoys from Paris arrived in Toulon from the Ministry of Justice and Marine. These men had orders from Napoléon to put an end to the worst of the prisoner maltreatment, including the bourgeois practice of sexual collaring, which was to have no place in the modern republic.

The Commissioner was removed, the adjudants-chef chastised. And all their submissives, both willing and unwilling, were uncollared and released back into the prison population. 

One of the envoys, an official called André-Joseph Chabouillet, took a liking to Javert, the most senior guard in Toulon who had not mastered a submissive. He invited Javert to accompany them to Paris to take up a position with the Prefecture of Police.

It was the opportunity of Javert's life, and he would be a fool not to leap at the chance. 

He did not look back on his life in Toulon. What reason would he have to remember a man, no, a convict, such as Jean-le-Cric?

  
  


* * *

  
  


In Montreuil's town square, they are reaching the bottom of the box, and the man, the mayor, is continuing, charmingly, to fend off all claims. The Widow Aurélie is attempting to argue him around, and Madeleine has put aside several notes written by her.

Javert realises this is what Le Cric has come to. The convict has not managed to do what he should not after all. Uncollared, left to his own devices, he has broken his parole and pretended he could be trusted in respectable company as a free man. What these women would do if they knew the beast that lurked under that gentle façade, ready to leap upon them and tear their clothes to shreds and devour them if given the opportunity!

Only Javert recognises the beast for what he is, only Javert is able to save the townsfolk from the criminal's subterfuge. Only Javert can hope to bend the convict to his strength, and rescue the man from himself.

The Widow Aurélie continues to press her case, and now another has entered the fray: Mlle. Bernadette, the schoolmistress at the École mutuelle, who walks up the steps and puts a note in Madeleine's hand. 

Aurélie bristles visibly, and the Widow Fontaine laughs again, and truly, this cannot be endured. 

It is now, it must be now; it cannot be a moment more. Javert clenches his jaw and leaves the square as rapidly as he dares. 

There is a guard post on one end of Place Saint-Saulve; Javert commandeers ink and paper and dashes off a terse line — _’M. Madeleine, I request your presence at my office this evening’_ — and hastens back out toward the proceedings.

The afternoon has now shaded into evening. The stragglers in the square have remained to watch the widows argue as the mayor tries to read out the last remaining letters and make a quick escape.

Javert's blood is very loud in his ears as he mounts the stairs. The note burns in his pocket. He will not permit the man to escape him. 

He reaches out his hand to seize hold of Madeleine.

The mayor turns his entirely unsurprised eyes up to Javert's. "Ah, Inspector," he says, calmly, "I am surprised to find this last note in the box. _'Dear M. le Maire, I require you to attend at the station-house to discuss matters of import'._ I did not know you were aware of our custom, or that you would use it for official purposes instead."

Javert does not immediately understand. The triumphant words freeze on his lips. He knows he did not write the note plucked from the box — his own note is in his pocket — which must mean Madeleine had — _Valjean_ had — 

— His hand falls on Madeleine's arm without any force at all.

"I accept your offer, Inspector," Madeleine says. "My apologies to the ladies Aurélie, Bernadette and Fontaine, but duty must come first. Thank you, Jules, that will be all. Let me bid everyone a good evening; we will all see each other again at church on Sunday."

The crowd murmurs in disappointment. It seems that the dour Inspector Javert has brought this colourful potential disagreement over their mayor to a premature end. 

Aurélie frowns, the Widow Fontaine laughs appreciatively, and Bernadette turns on her heel and stamps down the steps after the mayor's assistant, leaving Madeleine and Javert alone. 

Madeleine hands Javert the false note. Javert’s fingers tremble as he looks down.

The paper is blank.

"Lead the way, Inspector," Madeleine says, his eyes revealing nothing.

Javert clutches his arm as they descend the steps and cross the square as if the mayor is the one doing the leading, and indeed that is the truth of it. The paper is blank, and Javert's legs can barely hold him up.

The criminal must be perfectly aware of what he is doing to Javert. That old convict has managed to turn the tables so cunningly on his former guard; Javert has fallen into his trap as neatly as if he, Javert, had baited it with his own heart. 

The station house steps are lined with paving stones that also line the way to the mairie. Within the station the floors are cheap concrete. Javert's feet recognise the way through the gathering dusk, which is a blessing, because the world is otherwise a cloud of darkness now the mayor is at his side.

The young deputy manning the front desk snaps to attention when the inspector and the mayor enter through the station door. Javert does not know what has become of Duchamp or the mayor's assistant and finds he does not much care.

"Ensure we are not disturbed," he manages to grind out, and then he is alone with Madeleine in his dark, cramped office, where he finds there is barely enough room between the door and the writing desk for two grown men to stand face to face. 

Javert crowds Madeleine against the door, squaring his shoulders and hips and greater height into Madeleine's body so the mayor is forced to tilt his chin up to look at him. The small lamp above the desk casts its brightness across the darkened room, wreathing Madeleine's upturned face in both light and shadow. 

The composure that he wore in the square has vanished like the façade it was. Now that he has delivered himself into Javert's domain, Madeleine’s eyes are fearful and his lips have paled; his brow glistens with cold sweat. At his throat, his once carefully-knotted cravat has come half undone. 

Javert's fingers ache to rip away the flimsy silk and reveal the scars of the iron collar the man had once worn, to bare that throat for the submissive's collar the man has never worn. 

He settles for taking hold of the front of Madeleine's coat, pinning those powerful arms to their sides in the way he had only dreamed of trapping the convict in Toulon. Madeleine's mien is as stoic as Le Cric's always has been, but underneath the gentleman’s coat and waistcoat and shirtsleeves, his powerful body is trembling, the last vestiges of disguise so close to being unravelled at last.

Javert reaches for the harsh tones of the bagne, although he finds he cannot once again address the convict as _thou_. "You should not have pretended I wrote that note."

Madeleine's eyes flicker: with nervousness, with the defiance he remembers, and a wryness that belongs to the mayor. "Is it pretence, when you yourself have a similar note in your pocket?"

Javert has forgotten his own note, and is struck silent for an instant. "How do you — I only did such a thing to rescue you from yourself!" He hardly knows what he is saying, but now it’s said he does not doubt it is true. Nor this: "How could you dare put yourself forward in such a manner?" 

How indeed could this cunning man, fleeing from the police, have so distinguished himself — by claiming the mayor's scarf and presiding over this ridiculous custom and parading himself like an alluring prospect before those whose claims he could never accept? What is more, why would he have placed himself into Javert's hands?

Madeleine says, "I have nothing to fear from these people. I have served them faithfully for years; I've sought nothing but their good." Echoing words Valjean said so many years ago, standing beside the sea wall with dusk gathering around them, he says, desperately, "I have done nothing I should not have —"

"That is not true," Javert says, echoing his own words. "What else would you call what you've done, M. le Maire — taking this name, claiming to be a man of standing, when you are in truth a danger to others and to yourself?"

His chest heaves with quick breaths. They are standing so close together he can feel the shudder run through the man's broad body. He continues, hardly aware of what he's saying: "I would have known you from the way you watch me. It is the way you have always watched me, from before."

And there it is, at last: the shared past, the old name, the harsh rules of ownership and dominance laid down in Toulon a lifetime ago. Madeleine — Valjean — breathes out in a huge gust, and neither admits nor denies that these things are true. 

What he says is, "I am no danger, Javert. I have not laid hands on anyone else, nor on myself, I swear it." 

"How can I be sure?" murmurs Javert, and draws off Madeleine's coat and jacket, and sure enough, there is the evidence of Le Cric's insubordination, pressing hot and shameful against the fine cloth of the mayor's breeches. 

Madeleine inhales sharply but does not draw away. "It isn't like that," he murmurs. "Although I have been watching you; I have thought about nothing else for these weeks and months, I confess it." His fingers grasp Javert's own coat. "You would be within your rights to chastise me, Inspector."

"Are you asking me to chastise you?" Javert asks. Madness, of course, for a mayor to seek discipline from a policeman. Unless that mayor was a convict who had once promised to submit to the authority of the only man strong enough to claim him.

Madeleine says — Valjean says, "I will not. Not unless you first ask me," and he folds to his knees before Javert. 

Javert swears in surprise and then in earnest, but Le Cric's legendary strength is irresistible; those large hands seize hold of Javert's hips and pin them to Javert's desk with brute force. Javert's own coat has come loose. The criminal — the man — puts his cheek against the front of Javert's uniform trousers, and Javert cannot catch his breath.

"Monsieur — I am not—"

"Then I, too, have nothing to say," and the man opens Javert's trousers and takes Javert into his mouth.

Is Valjean finally surrendering to custody, or is he submitting to Javert's claim? Or is this yet another deception? It is impossible to concentrate as the man's lips close over Javert's swollen member with terrible gentleness, with skill that comes from years of practice and urgency that comes from years of drought.

Valjean holds Javert in place as he struggles: either to get away from the convict or to keep from bucking them both off the desk, Javert isn't sure which. Valjean stretches his lips over the head of Javert's prick and sucks him down to the root, and then it is Javert who is submitting.

No other hand has ever touched Javert to caress him, no man has ever before offered such service him on his knees, and here is the mayor, the convict, who seems to know precisely how to impose pleasure upon him. Even if this is artifice, a last desperate trick from a desperate man, Javert cannot help but surrender.

From far away he hears himself groaning, hears himself make the abandoned noises that he remembers from others in the open courtyard of the bagne on La Saint-Valentin, during a very different lottery of love. 

Javert tries to keep from choking the man, as any considerate owner would, but Valjean's touch is so warm and seemingly so willing that restraint is impossible. He winds his fingers around Valjean's throat and thrusts recklessly into the man's wet mouth as if he has that right. 

The groans he makes are wordless. If he could speak, what he would say is: _Let me have you, even if I can no longer claim you, at least while it is still Saint-Valentin._

Valjean complies as if his lips can read Javert's thoughts. His throat works around Javert's leaking prick, his hands stroke the long muscles in Javert's thighs, his tongue coaxes the desires from Javert that were long buried on the shores of Toulon.

Javert's fist closes around the man's cravat as if it is a collar; Valjean chokes but doesn't pull away, and Javert cannot hold back. He makes a sobbing sound that could have been the convict's name, any of his names, and then he is spending his secrets and his self in hot spurts that the man drinks down whole. 

When he is emptied, Javert sags back on the desk. It creaks under his weight as if the foundations of Authority itself cannot hold him up. 

Valjean sits on his haunches, his mouth swollen and red. His eyes gleam with fear, and something else that might be victory. He says Javert's name, as he has never said it in the bagne, in the same way as he might call him _Master_. 

Javert wants this too much, which means it must be false, as all his dreams of pleasure have always been false. "Are you now ready to give me an answer?" he says, his voice as unsteady as his legs.

Valjean gets to his feet, his jaw set grimly. "Are you now ready to ask?"

When Javert cannot respond, the man draws his jacket and his coat on over his shirtsleeves and straightens his cravat, becoming Madeleine once more before Javert's eyes.

"Since that is so, Inspector, we have no further business tonight. Perhaps you would do me the courtesy of stopping by tomorrow after your duties are over." He gazes searchingly at Javert. "Let me clarify: this is a request you are free to decline."

Javert stares back as if into the abyss. In the flickering lamplight the image of Le Cric's blunt, sensual features is superimposed like a palimpsest upon Madeleine's authoritative face.

Madeleine sees something that satisfies him for now. He nods decisively and opens the door, and despite the manifold large and small reasons to detain him, Javert lets him go. 

Javert cannot understand any of it. Why has Jean Valjean revealed himself to Javert now; what does he hope to gain by this service? Is he trying to prove that Javert is no better than any common guard, prepared to accept a forced surrender — or is Valjean finally submitting to Javert's claim? Or perhaps he means to pre-empt re-arrest by offering, as a Saint-Valentin bribe, the love he thinks Javert wants? Javert is none the wiser. 

What he knows is this. The man would kneel again very soon — be it before the Law, or to be claimed by Javert's collar. 

Javert tells himself it does not matter which it is, as long as he sees that man on his knees again after Saint-Valentin.

**Author's Note:**

> The RL practice of the Valentine’s Day Lottery is [described](http://www.retrobistrot.co.uk/tag/une-loterie-damour/#.WJAe1dK7q50) [here](http://gofrance.about.com/od/honeymoonsromance/a/StValentinesDayInFrance.htm).
> 
> Gueuex and Albin are the companions and clandestine lovers from Victor Hugo’s short story, [Claude Gueuex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claude_Gueux).


End file.
